Thursday, February 23, 2012

In this book, Laura Valentini offers an in-depth critique of the two most prominent answers to this question, cosmopolitanism and statism, and develops a novel normative framework for addressing it. Central to this framework is the idea that, unlike duties of assistance - which bind us to help the needy - duties of justice place constraints on the ways we may legitimately coerce one another. Since coercion exists domestically as well as internationally, duties of justice apply to both realms. The forms of coercion characterizing these two realms, however, differ, and so the content of duties of justice varies across them. Valentini concludes that given the nature of existing international coercion, global justice requires more than statist assistance, yet less than full cosmopolitan equality.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Professor Christine Korsgaard will give the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture on March 16 at the University College London.

Her lecture is called "On Having a Good" and it is free and open to the public. Ted Honderich will preside.

AbstractIn recent work I have defended the idea that the good is relational, that is, that the notion of good-for someone is prior to the notion of good, and that the idea of a good that is not good for anyone is incoherent. In this lecture I take up some issues raised by that account of the good. I ask what kinds of things can have a good, in what sense groups can have a good, how goods can and cannot be aggregated, and how we draw the line between changes in someone's identity and improvements in his/her condition.

Friday, February 17, 2012

The 2012 Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize will be awarded to Professor Seyla Benhabib (Yale University). The prize is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding achievement in the fields of Theology, History or Philosophy, focusing on individuals whose work promotes tolerance among nations and religions. Seyla Benhabib will receive the prize at the University of Tübingen, Germany, on May 8, 2012.

The Leopold Lucas Prize honors the memory of the Jewish rabbi and scholar Dr. Leopold Lucas, murdered at Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943.

Excerpts from a report from the event:As knowledge of history, culture, language, and religion can prepare students for political engagement, it can also help them cope with the struggles inherent to the human psyche. Experiments have shown the surprising degree to which people are prone to peer pressure, bullying, and deference to authority. Studies such as professor Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment illustrate how little it takes for us to quickly dehumanize our fellow man and see him as subordinate or as “the other.” [....]In closing, Nussbaum reiterated the idea that arts and humanities education (....) not only “shape people who are able to see other human beings as full people with thoughts and feelings,” but also build “nations that are able to overcome fear and suspicion in favor of sympathetic and well reasoned debate.”

Abstract: The idea of “promoting democracy” is one that goes in and out of favor. With the advent of the so-called “Arab Spring,” the idea of promoting democracy abroad has come up for discussion once again. Yet, an important recent line of thinking about human rights, starting with John Rawls’s book The Law of Peoples, has held that there is not human right to democracy, and that nondemocratic states that respect human rights should be “beyond reproach” in the realm of international relations. This is, for obvious reasons, a controversial view, especially given the powerful and important arguments purporting to show that democracies do significantly better than nondemocracies in promoting internal peace and equality, and in engaging in peaceful international cooperation. Both proponents and opponents of the Rawlsian view of human rights have argued that the view implies that democracies may not “promote democracy” in nondemocratic societies. But, given that all parties to this dispute agree that democracy is necessary for justice, and given the important instrumental goods provided by democracy, the Rawlsian view has seemed deeply implausible to many. In this paper I blunt this challenge to the Rawlsian view by showing how, even if there is no human right to democracy, we may still rightfully promote democracy in a number of ways and cases. Showing this requires investigating what it might mean to “promote democracy,” and looking more carefully at when various methods of democracy promotion are appropriate than has been done by most political theorists working on human rights. When we look carefully, we can see that acceptable forms and instance of democracy promotion are compatible with the Rawlsian view of human rights, and that this view is therefore not vulnerable to the “instrumentalist” challenge. We also see how, if political philosophy is to be useful, it must be willing to be less abstract and to look closely at actual cases.

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Axel Honneth: Critical Essays brings together a collection of critical interpretations on the work of Axel Honneth, from his earliest writings on philosophical anthropology, his reappraisal of critical theory and critique of post-structuralism, to the development and extension of the theory of recognition, his debate with Nancy Fraser and his most recent work on reification. The book also includes a comprehensive reply by Axel Honneth that not only addresses issues and concerns raised by his critics but also provides significant insights and clarifications into his project overall.

Monday, February 06, 2012

Abstract: This paper critically examines the familiar claim that the view John Rawls sets out in his The Law of Peoples is not really a cosmopolitan view. It develops Rawls's view as a coherent and attractive liberal cosmopolitanism and suggests that cosmopolitans not drawn to it ought to come clean about the extent to which they have abandoned some key liberal, or at least Rawlsian liberal, commitments.

Saturday, February 04, 2012

AbstractThis article offers a critical examination of theories that emphasize the importance of governmental provision of self-esteem to citizens. Self-esteem is the feeling that one’s abilities and achievements are positively appraised by the surrounding society, and in some cases the legal system. Such theories are becoming fashionable, following the influence of scholars such as Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, and others.The author argues that such theories face major challenges, on two accounts. First, trying to provide universal self esteem would imply that people would be under a duty to positively appraise the achievements of any given person, and that might violate the free exercise of judgment. Second, the dominant theories of recognition also emphasize the importance of self-respect. Such theories usually understand self-respect as ‘the relation of a person to herself/himself, that concerns their intrinsic worth’. The ability to positively or negatively appraise the conducts/achievements of other people is an integral part of this ‘intrinsic worth’. The attempt to provide universal positive appraisals (and therefore self-esteem) means therefore that a simultaneous achievement of self respect and self esteem is not possible as a social goal. Recognition theories face therefore not only an external critique by libertarian and (many) liberal approaches, but also internal problems of consistency between different parts of their own theories.

ExcerptsIn Elements of Moral Cognition, John Mikhail clarifies and attempts to vindicate John Rawls' linguistic analogy, according to which moral cognition is usefully modeled on Chomsky's account of linguistic cognition. In the first part of the book, Mikhail explicates key aspects of Chomsky's theory of language, shows how these have analogues in moral theory, and demonstrates Rawls' awareness of the isomorphism via key quotes from early works. In drawing out these analogies with linguistics, Mikhail suggests a new framework for moral theorizing. In the second part, Mikhail attempts to ground the empirical significance of this new framework by showing how it allows for a provisional description of "the mature individual's system of moral knowledge," and thereby explains a number of commonsense moral intuitions. In the third part, Mikhail shows how the new framework allows for forceful responses to some early criticisms of Rawls' linguistic analogy.

This book is both enlightening and frustrating. It is incredibly well-informed and, consequently, incredibly dense. Press reviews for the book -- from Noam Chomsky, Gilbert Harman, and Frans De Waal -- accurately note the conceptual depth, careful execution, and great erudition with which Mikhail's central claims are developed. The text includes twenty-three epigraphs and only ten chapters. I worry that many readers will find the book overwhelming and tedious, wonder whether defending an analogy Rawls drew early in his career is worth all the effort, and abandon it midway. To abandon or ignore this book on that basis would be a mistake.(....)

I look forward to seeing his future work on the topic. Despite its limitations, readers will learn a lot from Elements of Moral Cognition.

See my previous post on John Mikhail's book here (with links to some of his papers).

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

The essays in this volume question whether democratic politics requires discussion of truth and, if so, how truth should matter to democratic politics. While individual essays approach the subject from different angles, the volume as a whole suggests that the character of our politics depends in part on what kinds of truthful inquiries it promotes and how it deals with various kinds of disputes about truth.

Political theorists Jeremy Elkins and Andrew Norris observe that American political culture is deeply ambivalent about truth. On the one hand, voices on both the left and right make confident appeals to the truth of claims about the status of the market in public life and the role of scientific evidence and argument in public life, human rights, and even religion. On the other hand, there is considerable anxiety that such appeals threaten individualism and political plurality. This anxiety, Elkins and Norris contend, has perhaps been greatest in the humanities and in political theory, where many have responded by either rejecting or neglecting the whole topic of truth.

Part III: Decision and Deliberation11. Democracy and the Love of Truth - Bernard Yack12. J. S. Mill on Truth, Liberty, and Democracy [Abstract] - Frederick Rosen13. Can This Marriage Be Saved? The Relationship of Democracy and Truth - Rogers M. Smith14. Democratic Politics and the Lovers of Truth - Nadia Urbinati

Part IV.: Truth and Public Reasons15. Truth and Public Reason [First page] - Joshua Cohen16. The Truth in Political Liberation [pdf] - David Estlund17. Truth at the Door of Public Reason: Response to Cohen and Estlund - Josiah Ober18. Just Gimme Some Truth: A Pragmatist Proposal - Robert Westbrook